Twitter to Instagram: 'Hey, we can crop photos, too!'

Social networks are in an all-out war for your clicks, and photo-sharing features have become key tools for attracting new users and higher levels of engagement. Twitter has already done a lot to integrate images in your feeds, and now in an Android app update released Monday, it’s bringing more photo-editing tools into the fold.

Now you can easily crop and rotate a photo before you post it, and then tag any friends you’d like to “mention” in the photo. And of course you can still apply Instagram-like filters to your photo. You've been using those filters, right?

Twitter's Activity column should be called "is everyone Tweeting without me?"

The app update also introduces a new layout that’s intended to help you discover relevant and interesting tweets. The interface is a bit busy, and it places an emphasis on recommended and trending tweets rather than one-on-one interactions with your Twitter friends. The app still opens to your own curated Twitter feed, but mentions and direct messages are stowed away behind icons at the top.

Still, if you’re an especially social tweeter, hopping from conversation to conversation and making friends wherever you go, you’ll find that the new Twitter layout is designed specifically for you. The update is rolling out now for Android users. If you just can’t wait for your device to automatically update, try manually installing it from the Google Play store.

For comprehensive coverage of the Android ecosystem, visit Greenbot.com.

Florence Ion Staff Writer

Florence is a technology journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She covers Android smartphones and tablets and its various forks. She's also written about a variety of other tech-related things for Ars Technica, Maximum PC, Mac|Life, PCGamer, PCWorld, and Nintendo Power.More by Florence Ion